| I've done an about face on Terry McAuliffe's candidacy for governor of Virginia. Not that it matters, since I live and work in West Virginia (although nearby, in counties bordering on Highland, Bath and Rockingham).
I'll admit my initial, and rather intense, opposition was based on how profoundly unimpressed I was by his book, What a Party. It remains an unfortunate title. And in these grim days, it's a triple entendre, for the high life and times during the Clinton years can't be entirely excused (at least in terms of contributing to deregulatory excess and to that period's debauchery and ethical laissez faire) for the post-hangover headache we as a nation now collectively endure.
It was also the intellectual shallowness and personal callowness which I found disturbing in McAuliffe's memoir. It was like the autobiography of a wealthy, political Zelig: Looky! Here's me standing by when the President signed this! And here's me looking on while the President did that! I have absolutely nothing of substance to say about any of it, really, and I didn't do anything to make it happen. Other than raise a lot of money. (And probably enable some unfortunate presidential "partying.")
Then there was the bitter end game of last year's epic primary battle between my guy and Senator Clinton.
But even more there was my personal story. I'm a yellow dog Democrat. From West Virginia, but with a long sidetrip to New York City, where I worked for years in publishing before Thomas Wolfe-ing back to my little hometown near the Virginia border.
On the one hand grimly and on the other with exuberant fascination, I watched good little West Virginia morph from blue to crimson while Virginia went the other way. I admired the hard-headed (in a good way) post-ideological pragmatism of Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, and I've more than liked Jim Webb's "redneck" (ie, working class, "little guy") populism, especially on economic issues, since reading his magnificent 2004 book on Appalachia and its people's unique contributions to American history, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.
I badly wanted Webb on Obama's ticket. The first African-American President serving with an Appalachian Son of the Confederacy? It would have been like a real life work of magical realism by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but with a North American setting. Then, last fall, I did my volunteer work for Obama in Harrisonburg, and it was one of the great experiences of my (considerably eventful) life.
So, I resented McAuliffe as a rich buttinski dillettante. Would he not undermine and maybe even reverse the indigenous Virginia Blue miracle when Senator Creigh Deeds (from neighboring Bath County and very WV Senator Walt Helmick-like in terms of charm and middle-of-the-road legislative efficacy) and former House of Delegates member Brian Moran are both so worthy as inheritors of that remarkable recent trend?
I've changed my mind.
And what did it was a simple thing, really. It was this op-ed piece by McAuliffe in last Wednesday's (very conservative, Little Harry Byrd) Harrisonburg "Daily News-Record": http://www.dnronline.com/opini...
It's about a new technology, developed at Virginia Tech, one that's being tested by Buff Showalter and Oren Heatwole in the Shenandoah Valley, a technology that applies pyrolysis to chicken litter, converting it into a high-grade fertilizer, as well as a biofuel which can be used as heating oil and a gas which can power the machine itself, making the contraption entirely self-sustaining.
Long story short, it helps farmers, who vote conservative Republican (Obama carried Harrisonburg 57-43 but was, of course, crushed in Rockingham County), and addresses serious environmental issues. Namely, the Chesapeake Bay problem. As McAuliffe astutely notes, Shen Valley chickens alone produce "an estimated 500,000 tons of waste every year."
I'm impressed that McAuliffe is effectively trying to build bridges in a smart, let's-solve-the-problem-with-new-technologies-and-ideas way with a constituency that tends to abhor all (or most) things viewed as "liberal" or "Democratic." That's in the tradition of Warner, Webb and Kaine in Virginia, and it's in the post-ideological, new paradigm, new coalition style of Obama.
And it means I most likely was wrong to have assumed that McAuliffe is a divisive Clinton period anachronism. Or, if not entirely wrong, then, too biased and too superficial myself. Too blinkered. McAuliffe's centering his campaign on economic progress based on the development of new technologies and alternative energy sources. His "Daily News-Record" op-ed shows me that he didn't become a multi-millionaire entirely by accident.
Oh. Plus, I'm now convinced the guy can win, and by that I mean, beat Bob McDonnell, the conservative Republican and current attorney general who will be the state's GOP standardbearer.
http://www.chesapeakebay.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
http://www.whataparty.us/
http://www.brianmoran.com/about
http://www.deedsforvirginia.com/
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http://www.ashbrook.org/public...
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